 I recently visited Christian, my physical therapist, and he offered me a quiz, of sorts, to determine my overall health. I love quizzes like this because I work really hard to maintain my health. My excitement was short-lived when I started the ‘movement’ section. Everyone thinks I’m so active, but honestly, I knew I’d fall short. The other section is my emotional health. I sleep pretty well most of the time, but as a people-pleaser, caregiver, and over-organizer, I expected to fall short again. I wasn’t wrong. In reviewing my scores with Christian, my PT, he noted the same thing I did. Movement and emotional health needed some improvement. Yippee. He suggested I utilize my Fitbit app for meditation … that quiet time between one minute and several minutes. I started with one and struggled. I knew Christian was on to something. It’s been one day and I’m up to three minutes twice a day. It’s not so bad but it is a conscience effort. Now movement will take more effort. While I play pickleball at least twice a week, it’s not enough. I noticed about a year ago that I wasn’t meeting my 10,000 step goal so I did the most obvious … reduced my steps to 8,000 and I still wasn’t cutting it on most days. My Fitbit buddies were beating me every week. Christian’s little test was right. He suggested I take a meditation walk - basically killing two birds with one stone. He urged me to modify my walk to include listening, touching, smelling, and seeing - four of the five senses. Yeah, it’s trickier than it sounds. Of course, two days later I found myself stuck in a doctor’s office for over two hours … but had a lovely and lengthy conversation with a delightful woman. I felt so energized chatting with her … we were like kindred souls, like-minded, caregivers, people-pleasers. We validated each other and we both saw ourselves in each other. What I didn’t expect is it checked one of the emotional health boxes … engaging with someone. Good for me. They say pictures are worth a thousand words … so welcome to my meditative walk … I have spent more of my day being present - I mean really present. One thing at a time has never been easy for me. Even now, as I write, I have a cat on my lap and music is playing. There is a gentle breeze coming through our opened windows - deep breathing is a given. Oh, and there is aroma of bacon cooking in the oven as BLTs are for lunch. Allow me to qualify that ... Tom is having a standard BLT, I'm having a BSTA sandwich (bacon, spinach, tomatoes, and avocado).
For those who know me, yes, I eat bacon, but it's not your standard grocery store fare. My bacon is:
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